Friends of Brockwood ...

Interesting to attend the Krishnamurti Centre for a Friends weekend ... some structure, dialogues and group viewings of talks by K ... even more interesting to spend time there without any structure and see who turns up ... Rod, from Kent, who turned up on a previous visit, with his dear wife Anne, now passed on, spoke for many when he said how hard he finds it to have deep conversations where he lives ... of course he could put a sign on his door "Knock here for deep conversations", and indeed there were regular seekers after deep conversations turning up at the cottage in Stanhope, though mostly only when an invitation had been issued .... it seems one of the roles of the Retreat House on Front Street is to have an open door for the purpose ... lets see ...

Interesting also to observe, even in the most intense dialogues, a tendency for those steeped in K's teachings, to back up their words by referring to K ....whose main teaching was not to refer to any guru, but to discover the Truth for oneself ... hmmm .... a paradox since the teachings, whether K, Buddha, Nisargatta, Jeff Foster, Alan Watts or whoever are helpful and universal ... though only transformative when embodied, experiential ...

Interesting folks for chats, some of whom envy the home-free life, two others practising it ... and all of the Friends, and other guests without that formal distinction, indeed seeking and creating their paths ... two only obliquely referring to K, being involved in a group of "ponderers" studying Alice Bailey, an associate of the Theosophists, with whom K began his "career", having been hailed as the long awaited World Teacher and showing remarkable strength of character to walk away from all the status and wealth showered upon him, declaring "Truth is a Pathless Land" and "Leaders destroy followers, followers destroy leaders" .... which, of course, only made him even more popular and persuasive, having embodied his own message ...

The Grove is delightful in May ... a riot of colour, heady fragrance and the huge redwood trees, strong and stable as always ... the photo illustrates the visual aspect, though unfortunately cannot capture the olfactory ...perhaps someone is working on this one somewhere?

The three bus, one train, one ten minute walk journey, covering quite a distance across England, is seamless both ways and rewarded with interesting companions in both directions, the last of whom, a friend from the Dale, returning from a Mindfulness Taster session in Crook, receives Freedom from the Known, one of the three K books added to the third version of the Library ... which has some interesting material for anyone passing the little cottage by the river in Stanhope, current base for this wandering blogger ...